In an interview, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford spoke about Battleborn and the unpleasant competition situation with Blizzard’s Overwatch. He also mentioned that Gearbox is basically quite satisfied with the previous successes.
The MOBA shooter Battleborn has had problems from the beginning to stand out against the seemingly similar Overwatch by Blizzard. Meanwhile, even special events like Battleborn Day hardly attract players to the colorful world of Battleborn anymore. Analysts are now even saying that Battleborn brought Gearbox onto the developers’ death list for 2017.
In light of this bad news, one might think that Randy Pitchford, the boss of Gearbox, is cowering hysterically in the corner of his office. But just the opposite seems to be the case. In an interview with Glixel, Pitchford spoke extensively about Battleborn and concluded “We’re doing quite well!”
Not so bad?
Although Battleborn has not become a huge hit, the game was sold often enough not to be considered a total failure: “We had about 3.5 million people playing Battleborn. Relatively to Overwatch, are we a flop then?” Pitchford is quite annoyed by the comparisons.
For example, Pitchford pointed out that the number of gamers could be compared to the total number of over seven billion people on the planet. Seen this way, the entire gaming hobby would be a massive failure!
However, Pitchford does admit that some things went wrong. The blame mainly lies with Blizzard, who announced Overwatch when Gearbox was already deep into the release preparations for Battleborn. Against the overwhelming market power of Blizzard, not much could be done, so they tried to avoid comparisons between the two quite different games.
Blizzard operates on another level. They are also more disciplined. As Blizzard focused on essentially developing a reimagining of the Team Fortress gameplay with a tight focus on fast multiplayer action, they were able to work such that polish and refinement of Overwatch met the highest standards.
While Battleborn realized many different gameplay aspects, it genuinely wanted to create something new: like the solo campaign or the MOBA elements in competitive play.
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